A.MUSETTE ANABAPTISTS. 



HT 



Central Asia, every individual thinks an amulet ne- 

 cessary to secure him from harm. They were intro- 

 duced into Christian Europe by the Jews. With the 

 ancients, e. g., the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, 

 they were frequently found. From the pagans they 

 were introduced among the Basilidians. Their 

 amulets were stones with the word Abraxas (q. v.) 

 engraved on them. The Jews had many supersti- 

 tious notions about amulets, Many Christians of the 

 first century wore amulets, which were marked with 

 a fish, as a symbol of the Redeemer. To the Christian 

 divines, the use of amulets was interdicted, by the 

 council of Laodicea, under penalty of dismission 

 from office. With the spread of Arabian science 

 and astrology, the astrological amulets of the Arabi- 

 ans, the talismans (q. v.), came into use in the West. 

 ~"The small images of saints, which the Neapolitan 

 seamen, and almost all the Greeks, wear about them, 

 are nothing but amulets. The Turks, the Chinese, 

 the people of Thibet, and many other nations, have 

 yet great confidence in them. 



AMUSETTE ; a small one-pound cannon, employ- 

 ed in war, in mountainous regions. Lightness and 

 a great facility of movement are its advantages. 

 Marshal Saxe recommends the A. strongly. The 

 count of Lippe Buckeburg improved it essentially 

 and introduced it among the Portuguese infantry. 

 Each platoon had an A. drawn and served by five 

 .men. The duke of Weimar, also, in 1798, gave 

 his riflemen amusettes. At present they are out of 

 use in all armies. 



AMYGDALUS. See Almond. 



AMYOT, James; an old French writer; was 

 born at Melun, in 1514; died in 1593. He was 

 bishop of Auxerre, and grand Almoner of France ; 

 and is known even in foreign countries, by his much 

 esteemed translations of Plutarch and Diodorus. 



AMYRAUT, Moses, a learned French theologian, 

 bom in Touraine, in 1596 ; died in 1664. His works 

 are chiefly theological, and very voluminous. The 

 rigid Calvinists accuse him of Arianism, but Mosheim 

 calls him rather Arminian, or Semi-pelagian. He 

 was professor of divinity at Saumur, and was much 

 respected for his abilities, and the extent of his 

 cliarity, allowing the whole of his salary to flow to 

 the poor of every denomination. 



ANA. This termination, derived from the Latin, 

 when connected with a proper name, is used to de- 

 note collections of the sayings of distinguished men, 

 or of anecdotes relating to them. These collections 

 are numerous ; and compilations of the same charac- 

 ter were known even among the Greeks. The 

 Memorabilia of Xenophon, and the Lives of the 

 Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius, are full of anec- 

 dotes and sayings. The Attic Nights of Aulus 

 ("Jellius contain many observations and repartees of 

 distinguished persons in Rome. Thus, according to 

 Quinctilian, a freed man of Cicero left a whole book 

 of his master's jests, and another freed man of 

 Maecenas the table-talk and witticisms of this dis- 

 tinguished friend of the muses. At the time of the 

 restoration of learning, the sayings of famous men 

 began to be collected. The Scaligeriana were the 

 first compilation which appeared under that name, 

 Since that time they have become common, particu- 

 larly among the French, who have often used them 

 merely as a vehicle for disseminating certain opinions 

 under some famous name. Among the French col- 

 lections are the Huetiana, Menagiana, P'oltariana, 

 Bonapartiana, Bievriana, Brunetiana, Pradtiana, 

 &c. Among the English, such collections are also 

 . very common, e. g., fralpoliana, Baconiana, Par- 

 riana, &c. Selden's Table-talk and Boswell's Life 

 of Johnson are of a very similar character, though 

 they have not a similac title. The Germans nrnke 



not so much use of the syllable ana, as their litera- 

 ture is extremely poor in memoirs and works of the 

 sort above-mentioned, when compared with the 

 English or French. In some instances, however, 

 they employed it, e. g., Taubmanniana. The most 

 famous German work of this kind is Luther's Table , 

 talk (Tischreden). Collections of a different kind, 

 likewise, bear a title terminating in ana, e. g., 

 Parisiana, Revolutiana, Polissoniana, Ivrogniana. 

 There even exists a work entitled Ency elope diana, 

 ou Dictionnaire Encyclopedique des ana, by la 

 Combe, Paris, 1791, 4to. M. Peignot has published 

 a Bibliographic raisonnee des ana. (See his Reper- 

 toire de Bibliographies speciales, curieuses et instrue- 

 tives, Paris, Renouard, 1810, 8vo.> If it is allowable 

 to add the syllable ana to proper nouns, still such 

 words as Encydopcdiana, Literariana, &c., will 

 always be barbarous and offensive to a cultivated 

 ear. 



ANA SANTA ; the name of three desert islands in 

 the Atlantic ocean, W. Ion. 43 44', S. lat. 2 30/ 

 near the coast of Brazil, in the bay of San Luis de 

 Masanasis ; also of an island on the coast of the 

 province of Maranham, called Dos Macomes by the 

 Portuguese, and of another in the straits of Magellan, 

 on the northern coast, near the entrance of the South 

 sea. Also the name of several points. 



ANABAPTISTS (from the Greek * and jSa^T.^w) ; 

 a name given to a Christian sect by their adver- 

 saries, because they objected to infant baptism ; they 

 baptized again those who joined their sect, and 

 hence their name. Anabaptists say that infant bap- 

 tism was not customary in the earliest period of the 

 Christian church. (See Baptism) In the middle 

 ages, it was declared invalid by many dissenting 

 parties, as the Petrobrusians, Catharists, Picards, 

 &c. ; but in the prevailing church, for important 

 reasons, it was retained. In 1521, when the pro- 

 gress of the reformation had opened the way to new 

 opinions, some enemies of infant baptism appeared 

 at Zwickau, in Saxony, united partially with the 

 rebels in the peasants' war, and were completely 

 separated, by their lawless fanaticism, from the Pro- 

 testant cause. (See Munster.) With the baptism 

 of adults, performed even by laymen, they connected 

 principles subversive of all religious and civil order. 

 They acknowledged neither ecclesiastical nor civil 

 authority ; and attempted to bring about a perfect 

 equality of all Christians. The vast increase of 

 tl eir adherents from the year 1524, especially among 

 the common people on the Rhine, in Westphalia, 

 Holstein, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, was 

 soon met by severe measures on the part of the 

 magistrates. After 1525, imperial and ecclesiastical 

 decrees were issued against the Anabaptists in Ger- 

 mai y, and many were put to death, after being 

 urged to recant. The same happened in Switzer- 

 land and in the Netherlands. Still, new associa- 

 tions of this sect were perpetually formed by itiner- 

 ant p 'ophets and teachers ; and their doctrines con- 

 sisted of the following propositions: " Impiety pre- 

 vails every where. It is therefore necessary that a 

 new family of holy persons should be founded, en- 

 joying, without distinction of sex, the gift of pro- 

 phecy and skill to interpret divine revelations. 

 Hence they need no learning; for the internal 

 word is more than the outward expression. No 

 Christian must be suffered to engage in a legal pro- 

 cess, to hold a civil office, to take an oath, or to 

 hold any private property ; but all things must be in 

 common." With such sentiments, John Bockhold, 

 or Bockelsnn, a tailor of Leyden, aged twenty-six, 

 and John Matthias, or Matthiesen, a Tbaker of Haar- 

 lem, came, in 1533, to Munster, in Westphalia a 

 city which had adopted the doctrines of the n-for. 

 T a 2 



